An evergreen garden

For Bharati Ganguly, a garden is a place to relax. That's why she grows plants that need minimum care but have evergreen appeal.

Most of the plants she has chosen for her garden can withstand harsh climatic conditions.

By keeping the design of the garden basic and simple, she has created a tranquil green setting that helps her beat the blues.

Pots of colourful petunias provide a burst of colour along the paved entrance, oozing old-fashioned charm.

A thriving climber called the Australian gold vine (Tristellateia australasiae) frames a window on the façade, adding life to the bare wall.

Steady supply

The compact evergreen climber produces masses of dark green foliage and clusters of star-shaped yellow flowers.

According to Bharati, this climber is very resilient and continues to produce a steady bloom throughout the year, particularly during the intensely hot summer months.

Masses of purple fountain grass (Pennisetum setaceum rubrum), with deep burgundy foliage and feathery plumes, provide a striking backdrop to the green lawn.

Bharati has made generous use of this showy, ornamental grass throughout her garden to highlight other perennials. They rustle in the wind and create a swaying border along the compound wall.

Durable, drought-tolerant and decorative, the fountain grass needs very little upkeep to thrive in Dubai's hot climate.

Scarlet glory

Standing amid the gracefully arching plumes of this tall grass are jatropha shrubs, studded with attractive scarlet blooms.

An extended trellis covered with a popular hedge plant called clerodendrum (Clerodendrum inerme) creates a curtain of green foliage to provide privacy.

It also keeps the adjacent garage out of sight. Cobblestones are used to edge and define the undulating border.

Apart from fountain grass, the border also includes flowering shrubs, such as pink oleander (Nerium indicum), orange bells (Tecoma smithii), yellow bells (Tecoma stans), bougainvillaea and plumbago.

The azure flowers of plumbago create a splash of cool colours in the garden.

Window and door panes dominate the façade of the house, so one can enjoy the garden from inside the house.

When viewed from inside, the garden appears to be an extension of the living room.

A lone ficus tree (Ficus benjamina) stands outside the door, its drooping branches and glossy foliage framing the panes.

A flamboyant tree, Delonix regia, standing next to it provides dappled shade.

As the weather gets hot, it bursts into flaming red flowers, adding brilliance to the lawn.

The two trees, along with the surrounding walls, create far too much shade to allow any other plant to grow there, Bharati says.

Bothersome spot

The spot has been a problem area for long. Bharati's attempts to grow flowering perennials in the area have failed because no plant could survive on that inhospitable patch.

She even tried growing an easy-to-maintain frangipani there but that didn't work either.

Ultimately, she decided to pave the area with cobblestones and plant some hardy succulents and ground covers in the crevices.

A huge agave, with its blue-green rosette of strong, fleshy leaves, on the top of the cobblestone mound makes for an eye-catching focal point.

A reddish brown ground cover called alternanthera (Alternanthera versicolour) provides a low-growing mat of foliage in the area.

The previous owners of the villa had left behind several full-grown trees. When you have well-set trees with roots going deep, you just have to learn to live with them — whether you like them or not.

Given a choice, Bharati would have liked to do away with the massive desert fan palm (Washingtonia filifera), which stands in her front yard like an ageing intruder.

Its large crown of fan-shaped fronds is too high to create any shade. The older fronds persist on the tree after they die, forming an unsightly mass of shaggy brown leaves.

A baggage, indeed

“This tree does nothing to enhance [the look of] the place and, on top of it, its extensive roots grow far and wide to jam the sewage system.

The roots often come out of the soil surface, killing the surrounding grass. You have to continuously cut the roots and plant new grass — all this involves too much maintenance,'' Bharati says.

The side yard is planted with scrambling shrubs, such as jasmine (Jasminum grandiflorum) and bougainvillaea, which cover the compound wall in a mantle of foliage and flowers.

The fragrant, white flowers of jasmine fill the area with a sweet scent at night.

In the backyard, golden yellow sunflowers create cheerful, sunny borders.

Indeed, these tall plants with large flower heads in shades of bright yellow and mahogany lend a bold look to the backyard.

Bharati likes growing sunflowers because these hardy plants thrive without much trouble in the heat and continue to bloom till the very end of the season.

Once the sunflower seeds ripen, they attract parrots to her garden.

Tips

Birds' retreat

• A seed plant such as the sunflower will invite a lot of birds to your garden — just make sure you do not remove the flower heads when they start drooping, because the spent flowers contain ripe seeds, which most birds love to devour.
  
• The sunflowers grow vigorously to become very tall in a short span of time. Therefore, to keep up with its growth, apply a booster dose of fertiliser just before the flower heads start to appear.
  
• Avoid growing sunflowers in windy locations. Preferably, sunflowers should be planted near a wall and the stem should be staked for additional support, as these tall, top-heavy plants are likely to topple over in windy conditions.
  
• If you have a small or medium-sized garden, avoid planting tall trees with massive roots, such as washingtonia palms and eucalyptus, because their extensive roots are likely to block the sewer pipes and damage the foundation.
  
• Plant masses of drought-tolerant ornamental grass, such as fountain grass, to highlight the flower beds.
• Gardening should be a relaxing pursuit. So make your garden easy to manage by growing hardy plants that thrive in heat and bloom profusely without much maintenance.
  
• Some heat-resistant and drought-tolerant plants that produce abundant blooms in the hottest months are moss rose (Portulaca grandiflora), Madagascar periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus), lantana (Lantana camara), bougainvillaea, desert rose (Adenium obesum), cape leadwort (Plumbago capensis) and crown of thorns (Euphorbia milii).